On May 21, around 10am-11am (even longer in some areas), many students in the Taft area experienced a power outage during finals week. This meant that many kids were not able to take their finals or their finals were delayed due to not being able to use their laptops from home. Madison Gregory had a particularly stressful time with this: “The power outage was super stressful to me. The Internet went out when I was taking my English final, and I thought I was going to be stuck with a bad score. Thankfully, everything got sorted out and now it’s all good.” Another student at Taft High had a very easy experience, Eyan Pitts stated, “I personally did not have a bad experience with the power outage because I was in class. The only thing that occurred was the lights flickering in our classroom, but that didn’t bother me much.”  

Those on campus got lucky and didn’t experience a lot of issues with the power outage; students on zoom suffered the worst due to lack of Internet connection and not being able to take their tests. Tearsa Gates, an online student, stated, “The power outage caused me to have to reschedule my test for later; I felt very frustrated because I wanted to get my final done on time when it was supposed to be.” The last student I spoke to, Corie Wise described her experience: “My power went completely out at home, so I was extremely annoyed; this was the worst time that this could happen on finals week.” Although the power outage caused some delays in testing, the power eventually came on and students were able to return back to normal and complete what they needed to complete. Teachers were understanding and reacted to the situation accordingly by allowing students to reschedule to a later time.